Private sector surgeons 'more efficient'

A recent report has found that the same surgeon will work more efficiently in the private sector than in the NHS.

Conducted by independent thinktank Civitas, the study concluded that the NHS culture cultivates loyalty to the services providers, which means that patients are potentially kept waiting and denied better treatment because alternative providers are being frozen out.

Lord Warner, a former Labour health minister, commented: "As the interviews in this report reflect, too many NHS personnel are too comfortable or frightened to create the discomfort and public angst that a properly functioning market would bring."

Furthermore, the thinktank suggested that the NHS was preventing better working practices from spreading by excluding private sector doctors from the medical community.

James Gubb, director of the health unit at Civitas and co-author of the report, suggested that the coalition government needs to "address the real issues as to why the market currently isn't delivering: the overwhelming power of hospitals and the closed-shop 'we can do it alone because we're the NHS' attitude so prevalent across the organisation."